


Something New

by eponymous_rose



Category: Sapphire and Steel
Genre: 100-1000 Words, Canon - TV, Drama, Gen, POV Third Person, Science Fiction, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-15
Updated: 2009-11-15
Packaged: 2017-10-02 23:07:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eponymous_rose/pseuds/eponymous_rose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Before and after the work, the duty, the cold.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Something New

It's not quite the way things are supposed to work - there is, after all, a procedure, a protocol, a debriefing - but as they turn to leave, he brushes against her mind, inviting, and she moves with him, footsteps echoing in memory as the world crystallises anew.

"What is it?" she says, but her voice is unconcerned, a trifle impatient, and the corner of his mouth twitches into a smile. "Steel?"

Motion in his peripheral vision catches his attention; he glances over his shoulder at a sheet of hanging plastic, wavering slightly in the wind. Sapphire touches his arm, and for a moment he senses an anxiety from her, an uncertainty veiled in brusqueness, and she repeats her query.

He answers with a question of his own; no urgency, no rush, no need for perfect clarity. "How old would you say this section of the building is?"

Her fingers tighten on his sleeve, almost imperceptibly, and he knows she is uncertain at his quiescence. "Perhaps three days at the most," she says, with a clipped precision that tells him she could add the minutes and seconds if need be.

With a shrug, he pulls away from her to brush a hand against the sawdust accumulating on one of the support beams. "I've been watching them build it," he says. "The whole building, right from the ground. It's old wood, but they're making it new, cheating Time."

"I know," says Sapphire.

He turns to her with such suddenness that he can feel her surprise before she clamps down on it. "You don't," he says. "You've been told."

She pauses at that, and he catches a fragment of the word _paranoia_ before even that is blocked from him. "By my senses," she says, cautious now, appraising his mood.

"If you like," he says, just to catch her off-balance. "Whatever the case, you haven't seen it for yourself, not really."

For a long moment, she stares at him, and he can nearly feel the shiver of her touch on his mind. "All right," she says at last, and smiles. "If you like."

"It's a new place," he says, glancing up at the sky through the unfinished boards making up the ceiling. "New and untouched." Her gaze is fixed on him; he meets it slowly, manages to inject a touch of self-deprecation into his voice. "I like it here. It's quiet."

"Yes," she says.

"Not that there's not a lot of noise," he adds, as a jackhammer starts somewhere below.

"No," she says. "But it is quiet."

He stiffens, expecting a touch of mockery, but her tone is calm and her mind, faint through the ever-present barriers, has a strange sense of wonder-

"It's just a between-place," he says, and turns away, voice trailing. "A new place after and before all the old ones that just pull Time nearer and nearer to us. A crossroads."

She leans closer to him, resting the immaculate sleeve of her dress on a pile of wood-chips; his eyes catch momentarily on the way they cling to the loose threads of fabric as she speaks. "Time has its hold on this place, too. From the very beginning, the building is weakening, giving Time more and more control."

"Yes," he says. "And one day all the structural supports will fail and it'll collapse, or we'll be back here in a hundred years' time to set the whole thing right again." He takes her hand but doesn't meet her eyes. "It won't always be quiet."

She sighs, sending up a delicate plume of sawdust. "Nothing worthwhile ever is," she says, and he does glance up at that, but by the time he does, she's already left and even her smile has faded.

It takes him a moment to shake the ghosting of her touch, but finally he turns around, casts a last glance at the room, unfinished, unblemished, but with a blankness at the edges, a familiarity, a history.

"Take it," he says, waving an arm to encompass the whole of the flimsy structure. "Take it all."

He turns again, following the resonances of her footsteps, and all the while Time marches on in the echoes of the jackhammer, in his own traitorous pulse.


End file.
